


the peter parker conspiracy

by tempestaurora



Series: the conspiracy kids [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Harley Keener is a Good Bro, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Peter says Fuck, conspiracy videos, teenage for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 23:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16073411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: At sixteen years old, Peter, with the help of Ned and Harley, made a documentary searching for the Truth about Spider-Man. Two years later, Peter is to reveal his identity as Spider-Man to the world.The internet explodes.SEQUEL TO THE SPIDER-MAN CONSPIRACY





	the peter parker conspiracy

**Author's Note:**

> i hate how easily i can be persuaded into things. like, 40+ people ask for a sequel so i write a goddamn sequel.
> 
> NOTE: sequels are never as good as the originals. Don't get your hopes up, you'll just get burned.
> 
>  
> 
> This entire AU starts in the fic before this in the series, created by [codeflaws](https://codeflaws.tumblr.com/) and [amazing-biderman](https://amazing-biderman.tumblr.com/). I could not have thought up something so hilarious on my own.
> 
> enjoy

_“The Avengers have announced a press conference for Saturday morning at eleven AM. It will be shown across the globe, live from the Avengers Compound in upstate New York. It’s rumoured that the Avengers will be announcing a new member to their team – or, as some are speculating, they are disbanding, despite the optimistic reports of the group returning to a sort of normal after the ‘rogue’ Avengers were pardoned.”_

Peter stared at the television in Aunt May’s apartment, jittering at the thought of the press conference. It was to announce him. Peter Parker. Spider-Man. _Avenger._

God, that was so cool.

“Stop shaking like that,” May muttered from the sofa. “You’re gonna cause an earthquake.”

“Not how that works,” Peter said, reaching over and taking one of her sandwiches. He took a bite before returning the rest of it to the plate. May merely rolled her eyes.

“Are you excited?”

“To be an Avenger? Hell yeah.”

“Not that,” May said. “But telling the world your secret.”

Peter hummed. “It’ll be interesting for sure.”

“I bet you can’t wait to see everyone’s reactions, though. The _conspiracy kid_ is Spider-Man all along.”

Peter cracked a grin and nodded. “Oh yeah. I’m psyched to see the internet burn.”

 

Considering how bad Peter had always been at keeping secrets, the _Who Is Spider-Man?_ prank was still as tightly guarded as it was the day it came out, two years prior. The only people who knew that Spider-Man was actually Peter Parker, the kid who made a two-part documentary detailing his search for the Truth were Aunt May, the Avengers (both new and old, plus Pepper and Happy), and his three best friends, Harley, Ned and MJ.

MJ had found out last year. She was furious.

(She had stared at him with a dead expression for almost five minutes. The two of them had been working on a project in Peter’s living room, their books spread out across the floor, and Peter had been planning on telling her for a while. He’d fetched the suit for evidence, and when he told her, she went silent. She didn’t blink once. Peter thought he was going to be burned alive by her gaze.

In the end, she’d said, “You’re fucking kidding me,” packed up all her stuff and went home. An hour later, she texted him.

**_MJ:_ ** _i’ll give you props for the prank_

**_MJ:_ ** _that’s fucking hilarious_

She’d forgiven him some time later.)

Peter regarded the prank as one of the best things he’d done in his young life, and he’d saved _a lot_ of people. He’d waited two years, but everyone was finally going to know how funny it was. Hell, even Peter respected himself for managing to keep up the confused, blank stare about the ‘conspiracy’. After some time, he’d acted as if he’d done some research into it, as the kids in his school were still asking questions, but he always came back with the same thing.

“It was blown out of proportion, clearly,” Peter had said. “I don’t see any signs of a conspiracy in there. I’m pretty sure I was imagining the cars.”

It had ended up on Twitter that Peter didn’t even have a clear memory of the conspiracy itself, and then Spider-Man was under scrutiny for months afterwards. People were still happy to be saved by him, because they _wanted_ to be saved, and New York rallied around him when The Daily Bugle stuck its nose in places it didn’t belong – but Peter could see it when he patrolled: people wanted to know the truth. People wanted to know what happened to Peter Parker and who the hell Spider-Man was.

All in all, Peter wasn’t worried about Spider-Man’s public relations. He knew, when he made the videos, that he would one day tell the world his identity – and that one day, the people of the world would realise what happened and all the uproar and conspiracy theories that arose from Peter’s docs would be seen for what it was: fucking hilarious.

 

Peter had been on _Ellen_ first. When she asked him what he thought about the conspiracy, Peter had laughed it off. Next to him, Harley and Ned rolled their eyes. They were insistent, but they also explained that they weren’t looking into it anymore. Tony Stark forbade it.

Later, Peter was invited with Tony onto Jimmy Kimmel’s show, and they talked about being Tony Stark’s personal intern as much as they talked about the documentary. His Twitter had exploded overnight after the first part to the doc, and Peter had willingly obliged with the requests to post pictures and videos of the workshop shenanigans.

The public was excited to see another side to Tony Stark – the side where Tony Stark fell asleep wrapped in an Iron Man blanket or ranting about the right way to make hot chocolate or trying (and failing) to explain to Harley that Vision was slightly more than _a glorified toaster oven._

After all that came Peter’s favourite moment of the lot: the Buzzfeed Unsolved Special.

 

“I can’t believe this,” Harley said, peering at the holoscreen in front of them.

“You better believe it,” Peter replied, smug. “That’s twenty-three minutes dedicated to the conspiracy we _made up_. They tried to figure it out themselves, but they had no luck.”

“Yeah, because it’s a scam. Christ alive, this is the most ridiculous thing to ever happen to me, and I discovered Tony Stark just chilling in my garage when I was thirteen.”

The Buzzfeed guys gave it a good shot though and at the end, Shane announced that they would never look into it again, _please don’t kill us, we’re mostly good people._

Harley laughed until he cried. It was a good day.

 

The day of the press conference was fast approaching, and Peter watched the speculation online. Many people thought they were going to announce a new Avenger – maybe Ant Man, considering he wasn’t counted as one officially, or (they hoped) Spider-Man. Many people wanted to see who Spider-Man was behind the mask, and many more wanted Peter Parker to be present and for someone to shoot a close up of his face to watch his reaction.

There were a few people who thought the Avengers were going to split up.

“Been there, done that,” Nat said to those rumours.

She’d figured out Spider-Man’s identity with minimal effort and a wifi connection. She was also an elite spy, so Peter wasn’t offended.

“I met you in person once,” she’d explained when Peter wanted more details. Harley was pretending to be indifferent to the conversation, but Peter knew he had the biggest crush on Natasha Romanoff and was probably listening more intently than Peter was. “I heard your voice. It’s difficult to forget.”

“That’s it?” Peter asked.

Nat shrugged. “Tony Stark has only cared about a small number of people in his life, let alone minors.” She counted them off on her fingers. “There’s Harley, who he brought out to New York the _second_ he could. There’s Spider-Man, who he looked out for in Germany and called _Underoos._ And there’s you, who has no logical way of obtaining a personal internship with Tony Stark, but he seems to enjoy your company so much that he keeps you around anyway.”

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to be offended by that,” Peter muttered.

Harley shrugged and Nat smiled. “Tony befriending three whole children felt like a stretch,” she said. “It wasn’t hard to narrow it down.”

So Nat had put two and two together within the first three minutes of the documentary, then watched with amusement as Peter and his friends pulled off stellar acting jobs that should’ve won them a multitude of awards. She told the other rogues – most of whom had a conniption about Peter being so young – but she’d already weaned them off that train of thought by the time they came back to America and were pardoned.

“I was trained much younger than you,” she said, once. “I killed a man before I reached your age. What you’re doing is nothing in comparison.”

Peter, desperately, wanted to sit down and have a chat with Natasha Romanoff’s parents.

So the press were trying to figure out if there was still tension in the Avengers, despite everyone having signed the Accords – and there was, but it was subtle and under the surface, barely focused on and rarely came up to the light of day. It came in the form of distrust between Tony and Steve – Peter didn’t know all the details, but he knew there had been a betrayal of some kind. He knew that what had once been something of a friendship had crumbled to a place that made it difficult to repair – but they were, bit by bit, because their goals were still the same.

They wanted to keep the world safe and it was harder to do that as enemies than as friends.

The Avengers, decidedly, were not splitting up. The Earth still needed them, and Peter figured his Instagram followers would dwindle slightly if they did, so Peter still needed them too.

(When the Avengers returned, Peter had filmed a short video with Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson. He started by asking if they’d watched the documentary he’d made.

“Oh, the one where you tried to uncover Spider-Man’s identity?” Sam asked. “I hear that drove you crazy.”

“I wouldn’t say _crazy_ ,” Peter replied, behind the camera. “But that’s not important. I’ve come to my conclusions on that. I’m here to ask you about something that was mentioned in the doc.”

“What’s that?” Bucky asked, unamused. They knew he was Spider-Man. They also liked calling him Short Stuff, Stubby and Hey Kid.

“Clint said, and I quote, that Spider-Man _kicked your asses_ in Germany. Do you have any comments on that?”

Sam’s eye twitched just a little bit. Bucky’s expression was neutral, deadly.

They didn’t reply. In the background, the camera caught half of Clint Barton, laughing hysterically.

Peter’s Instagram followers doubled overnight.)

 

Finally, the day arrived.

The press conference.

Peter was practically shaking out of his suit as he stood in the private wing of the compound.

“You’re gonna do fine,” Tony promised, his hands planted firmly on Peter’s shoulders. “They’re gonna love you.”

Peter pulled a face. “Remember what I said about keeping May safe?” he asked. “How am I supposed to do that if everyone knows who I am?”

“Peter, the world has known about you for _two years_. If something was going to happen to May, it would’ve already happened. But – and you know this – we’ve upgraded the security on the apartment, she’s got a panic button on her person at all times. She’s going to be fine, Pete. I promise.”

Peter nodded, jerkily. Then he whispered, “What if I’m a terrible Avenger?”

Tony smiled a sort of sad smile. “You won’t be. You’ll do your best, and your best is better than half of the other Avenger’s bests, so you’ll do fine.”

“What if I mess up? What if _I’m_ the reason our missions go wrong?”

“Peter,” Tony said. He was using his patient voice, but Peter always knew his patient voice was three words from cracking into his _I can’t stand here all day_ voice. Tony was doing very well at holding it together. “You’ve been on plenty of missions with the Avengers. You’re one of the reasons they go right. You’ve got this. Besides, after the summer, when you’re at MIT, you’re gonna be a hit at parties.”

Peter quirked an eyebrow and smiled something reluctant. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” Tony said with a firm nod. “You can walk on the ceiling. Drunk teenagers are going to _love_ you.”

The two of them stood outside the door that led into the designated press conference room for some time, waiting for it to begin. All the Avengers were present and they filed in when they were told to, standing along the back of the stage. Harley was already in there, among the reporters with his camera. He’d already instructed FRIDAY to zoom in on the reporters’ faces when Peter’s identity was revealed – he wanted to make a reaction video of the shock. (No one knew it yet, but Harley was going to use the gifs he made of this event as his reaction images for the next six months.)

Eventually, even Tony had to go into the press hall, to start the event. There was a screen, where Peter stood, waiting. It was showing the live coverage from a news channel, the reporter’s voice quietening when Tony approached the podium.

“I’m very excited for you all to be here today,” Tony started, “as today is a very important day for the Avengers. There’s been a lot of speculation about what this conference could be about, so I will promise you right now that the Avengers are _not_ disbanding.” Tony smiled his patented Interview Smile. “We are, however, introducing a new member to the team. This person has been fighting by our sides for a few years now; has proven himself to be a strong hero, with an impeccable moral compass. As is in line with the Accords, as a member of the Avengers, his identity will be revealed today, but we do ask that you give his family the privacy and respect they deserve.”

Peter swallowed and pulled on his mask. His hands were shaking as he blew out a long breath.

“Peter, your heart rate is particularly high,” Karen said in his ear.

“It’s just nerves,” Peter replied. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for two years.”

“Ah, yes,” Karen said. “Enjoy it, Peter. You deserve it.”

He smiled beneath the mask and stepped towards the press hall door.

“It is my honour,” Tony continued, “to introduce to you all the newest Avenger and protector of Earth: Spider-Man.”

Peter pushed the door open and strode into the room, chatter spreading throughout the reporters. He glanced over at the Avengers, lined up at the back of the stage. Nat gave him the smallest of head nods and Clint (who found out, eventually, that Peter was Spider-Man and not just an overly interested teenager) shot him a reassuring smile.

Peter moved to Tony’s side at the podium, and his mentor stepped back to join the others.

The room went silent as he approached the microphone, mask for the last time concealing his identity. He looked at Harley, in the front row, grinning like crazy and felt himself relax.

“Three years ago,” Peter started, relaying the lines he’d memorised, “I was offered a position with the Avengers. I was fifteen, a little reckless, and although being an Avenger was my dream, I knew I had a lot to learn before I hit the big leagues. It means a lot to me that Mr. Stark has had faith in me since then, that he’s seen me as an Avenger before I thought it was even a possibility.

“Two years ago, the rumours of my identity started spreading. It started with a strange, two-part documentary on YouTube that never really left anyone’s minds. I can honestly say it was one of the most ridiculous experiences of my life, and I’d like to thank everyone who took part in that.” Peter caught the confused expressions of the press and smiled to himself.

“Just so you know,” Peter added, ready to take off his mask, “being a robot would be great, but being the sixteen-year-old kid who tricked the entire world is a lot better.”

When Peter pulled off his mask, the room exploded into conversation, questions and shouting. Harley, front and centre, began laughing so hard he had trouble keeping the camera focused, while Peter, at the podium, grinned widely. Even the Avengers, behind him, couldn’t supress their smiles.

“My name is Peter Parker and I am Spider-Man.”

 

Peter watched the internet break apart from the comfort of the lab. Ned on one side, Harley on the other, they watched Twitter explode and Tumblr have a conniption. News websites and channels were replaying the footage from the conference over and over, showing pictures of Peter in his suit side by side with stills of him with dark purple bruises under his eyes and a stained hoodie he must’ve slept in.

Six hours after the news hit, the YouTube channel that had only two videos to its name: _Who is Spider-Man Part 1_ and _2,_ gained a third:

_got ya!_

It was a five-minute-long video of Peter laughing. No cuts, no edits, just Peter sitting in a chair and laughing until he cried. It went viral within an hour.

 

The interviews had already been booked with Spider-Man before the press conference happened, so Peter spent the next three days reliving the best idea he’d ever had in comfortable chairs under bright lights. Live audiences watched him laugh about how stupid it all was, and he got applause when it came up how he and his friends had kept the act up for _two years._

“I’ve had you before on the show,” Ellen said, once.

“That you have,” Peter agreed.

“Only we didn’t know you were Spider-Man at the time. You had just made a documentary searching for Spider-Man’s identity.”

“Yes.”

“And you swore on your life, sitting right where you are now, that there was no conspiracy behind it, that you were wrong.”

Peter nodded.

“Fucking hell, kid.”

They had to bleep her out, and Harley used the gif of her swearing to respond to tweets of people losing their minds over Peter Parker.

 

“So you’ve gotten into MIT,” Jimmy Fallon mentioned in his interview.

“That I have.”

“And your friend, and fellow prankster, Harley Keener, already goes there?”

Peter nodded. “Yeah, he’s a year older than me, so he started last year. My best friend, Ned – the other guy in the doc – he got into MIT too.”

“That campus isn’t gonna know what hit it. What do you think it’ll be like? Openly being Spider-Man in college?”

Peter shrugged. “My job has primarily been to save cats from trees, so I think it’ll be a lot of the same. Though! Tony – Stark – once mentioned that me being Spider-Man would be a great party trick and a bunch of drunk kids in college would go _crazy_ to see someone walking on the ceiling.”

(Spoiler: they did. One guy fainted. Another one called him the Mothman for the next four years.)

 

In interviews with the other Avengers, they were asked if they knew about Peter’s identity when the documentary came out.

“Yes,” Rhodey replied with a wave of his hand. “Tony’s an enabler. Vision and I were recruited for the cause. Pepper, too. She scheduled everything and made sure that Peter’s lie was fool proof.”

“I didn’t know he was making it,” Natasha said, “but I watched the first episode when it came out, quickly deduced that Peter was Spider-Man, and the group of us watched it together. It was very entertaining for us.”

“You know what?” Clint told the interviewer, sitting forward on his seat. “Nah. I didn’t know. I get fourteen calls to my _private number_ in the space of two days, asking me to be in a kid’s documentary, which I ignore, because I’m not an idiot. And then _Vision_ phones, asking me to be in the doc because his _young human friend_ was a good kid, so I do this, and I answer as helpfully as I can, and then I don’t find out for another _six months_ that the nice kid I talked to didn’t actually lose his goddamn mind and get abducted by Spider-Man. Six months. I thought that kid was genuinely in harm’s way, and then I get back to New York and he’s cackling on the goddamn couch when I ask about it, because _Nat figured it out so quickly, and you’re a super spy Mr. Barton, how did you not realise?_ ”

“Do you and Peter get along?” the interviewer asked, off screen.

Clint flashed a smile. “He’s one of the smartest, funniest people I’ve ever met. He and I have formed a Prank Kingdom together. Everyone else hates us.”

 

If there was one strange thing to come out of the reveal, it was that a _not particularly small_ group of people didn’t believe it. They didn’t think Peter Parker was Spider-Man. Sure, it explained a lot that he was; why would Tony Stark get a teenager to be his personal intern? How did Peter have the amount of access that he did? How did Peter just _stop_ wearing glasses and get strangely buff in the span of a few weeks?

Still, not everyone believed it.

“This is my favourite one yet,” Harley said, pointing at the holoscreen. Peter was filming it for Harley’s vlog channel. It was largely a collection of pranks on the Avengers and getting them to say ridiculous things whenever he could. It also contained a small collection of Harley lighting things on fire, exploding expensive stuff in labs, and his own meme edits where he took his footage of Tony Stark and edited it with bad music. He was quite popular.

“People think _I’m_ Spider-Man.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Peter said, moving the camera closer to the screen.

“Nuh-uh. Here is a forum _dedicated_ to unravelling Spider-Man’s identity. I’ve been following it since we made the documentary, and they’ve made a lot of really bad guesses and a few pretty solid ones.”

“Did they ever guess me?” Peter asked, turning the camera to look at Harley.

“Yeah, someone did, but it was written off because of our Oscar award-worthy performances. Also, people thought you couldn’t possibly have enough time to do your Midtown school work, make the documentary _and_ be Spider-Man.”

“Ha!” Peter said, spinning the camera to point at him. “Jokes on you! I don’t sleep!”

Harley let out a bark of laughter before looking back to the screen. “Okay! Okay. Here’s the theory – I’d say it’s pretty solid if, you know, I was actually Spider-Man, or you know, I haven’t seen you in the suit a thousand times.”

“I saved Harley’s life once,” Peter chirped.

“And you haven’t let it go since. Alright. So these guys aren’t accepting our explanation about the doc – you know, it was all scripted apart from MJ and Clint. Side note: MJ was really, _really_ confused that whole night. We have a lot of footage of her just calling us losers and idiots, and I _asked_ Peter to let me film it when he actually told her he was Spider-Man, like a year ago, but he wouldn’t let me.”

“It was really funny,” Peter confirmed. “She literally just walked out. Didn’t talk to me for three days.”

“So, these guys think the _government_ gave Peter the same serum given to Spider-Man and is using him to protect the real Spider-Man’s identity.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I wish I was, buddy. I wish I was shitting on you.”

“Shitting me, not shitting _on_ me.”

Harley cracked a smile, then shook his head. “You know what? I’m not gonna go there. There’s a lot to unravel in the concept of actually shitting you. _So,_ I would just like to say that if Peter does have the serum now, wouldn’t that make him another Spider-Man anyway? Or like, same powers, cooler name?”

“Hey!”

Harley made a face at the camera. “Peter was too young to know that branding was forever when he made up the name. Anyway – Ned found this awesome addition to this theory. This is my favourite part.” He changes tabs. “This dude on Reddit saw the forum post and got all detective on it. They said it was unlikely that Spider-Man could just _know_ where Peter was, that night he was confronted by him, let alone his routine and phone number. And they said that I wasn’t anywhere near as nervous as Peter about the threats, that I wasn’t being followed-”

“You were supposed to be the camera guy,” Peter commented, “but you’re an attention seeker.”

“Agreed. So, because I didn’t try to _stop_ the search – only came as close as taking a break – they theorise that _I’m_ Spider-Man.”

Peter snorted. “You’re the least athletically adept person I’ve ever met.”

“Ned,” Harley countered.

“You’re on par,” Peter replied.

Harley rolled his eyes. “Apparently if I had called for a stop on the search, they wouldn’t believe it’s me, because the real Spider-Man wouldn’t want to just _stop_ the doc, because it would expose him. So, somehow, I’m Spider-Man and that makes sense to approximately six thousand people.”

“Six thousand?!”

“The internet is full of morons, Peter. Complete morons.”

The camera shifted, landing on a desk so both Peter and Harley were in the frame.

“Technically,” Peter said, “you were Spider-Man. A bit.”

“Okay, I know what you’re getting at, but I’m _not_ Spider-Man.”

Peter scoffed. “I don’t need convincing. I can climb on ceilings. It’s the _internet_ that needs the convincing. _Anyway_ ,” he turned to the camera. “Harley has worn the spider suit at least three times. Once when I had multiple lying around, so we recorded a video called _Tony Stark Spills Coffee All Over Himself_ and it was actually just a nine-minute video of us dancing in time in the suits-”

Harley snorted. “I do actually have a video of Tony spilling coffee down himself.”

“He does it like every day it’s not rare. Another time was about six months ago and the internet exploded because _two_ Spider-Men showed up on the scene at the same time? Now, I’ll admit, it was a curveball, and I understand entirely how it just fuelled the flames that was the Spider-Man conspiracy.”

“Honestly,” Harley said with a shrug, “we were just dicking around in the suits when there was a distress call, and like, I can’t do half the stuff Peter can – but I provided a great distraction.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “He shouldn’t have been there. He got three broken ribs and Mr Stark grounded us for a month.”

“He’s not even our dad,” Harley whispered. “Don’t tell him that though, he won’t believe it.”

“And the only other time he’s ever worn the suit was during the confrontation in the doc!” Peter concluded. “I couldn’t be both in the suit and not, so Harley just jumped down from a fire escape and looked intimidating.”

“I’m actually offended that people thought I was really you in that scene,” Harley sniffed. “I’m like half a foot taller than him.”

 

In the end, they didn’t win any awards for their masterful work. No pranking award shows for them, no certificates to honour their deception and Tony’s admittedly great editing skills. Nothing for even the camera work of zooming too close into a billionaire’s face and leaving it there for the entire interview.

They didn’t mind, though. Harley, Ned and Peter could say they were part of the most popular documentary of the decade, and the internet, in all its idiocy, both proclaimed Spider-Man as their most hated and most loved superhero in the Avengers.

 

Due to popular request, Peter did three things with his identity reveal: he recreated the _it’s Wednesday my dudes_ vine, to great success; he started taking videos as he swung through New York City, the sidewalk rushing at the camera and then pulling away at the last second; and he made a follow up documentary about the making of _Who is Spider-Man?,_ complete with behind the scenes footage, bloopers of the boys laughing at Peter calling himself ‘jacked’, and Pepper Potts explaining in great detail why this was going to blow up in his face, as she mussed up Peter’s hair until it was sticking out at all angles.

 

(The world liked Spider-Man, sure, but the world _loved_ Peter Parker.)

**Author's Note:**

> anyway, there you go. that's what you guys asked for. a few of y'all gave me some ideas but there's a lot of comments to search through so i can't find everyone. if you see your idea in here, thank you for letting me use it! ridiculous fics were my trademark for a while and i'm glad to be writing some again.
> 
> if you're still in wait for the next hydra's not a home fic, it'll be out tomorrow!
> 
> THANK YOU FOR READING  
> PLS HIT THE KUDOS AND TALK TO ME IN THE COMMENTS BECAUSE I LIVE FOR COMMENTS


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